Subject: Re: sendmail[369]: unable to qualify my own domain name
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Simon J. Gerraty <sjg@quick.com.au>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/05/1999 10:06:10
der Mouse writes:

>>> Sendmail is being run by cron i suppose ...  how can I  shut it off
>>> completely ? I have no need for sendmail  at all ..

>I suspect what's going on here is that a cronjob is trying to send
>mail, which ends up invoking sendmail *even if it's not running as a
>daemon*.  Indeed, in some circumstances, cron itself will try to send
>mail.

Indeed.  This is true of most *nix.  At a big site where I'm the [HP]ostmaster,
the troops have instructions not to add machines to the DNS unless they 
can verify that SMTP is correctly configured.  It only takes one machine
to spend a weekend bouncing mail to itself to ruin Monday for all the 
Postmasters :-)

Lots of machine owners use the "but we don't use mail" excuse, but of course
there is generally no such thing as a *nix system that does not send mail.

--sjg